Jackson, draped in a clean white T-shirt that rests atop oversized gray pants, slides his chair forward toward his desk. His goatee is well-trimmed, perfectly drawn across his upper lip and around his chin. He is full of jokes—before class, after class, and sometimes even during class. When he laughs, he flings his head backward, letting the bellow of his own wit rumble from his diaphragm. His thick-framed black glasses slide down to the edge of his nose as he pores over excerpts from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” Although a jester, full of quips, he is also deeply focussed. He is bent over the book, his eyes a few inches from the page. He looks away only to give a quick glance at his notepad, insuring that his pencil is accurately reflecting his ideas and his synthesis of the text. Jackson, whose name I have changed to protect his identity, has been in prison since he was sixteen. He is twenty-five now, and says that receiving an education is the only thing that has kept him going. “I feel pride when I carry this notebook around,” he says.
Jackson and his fifteen classmates in this English composition course are students in the Boston University Prison Education program, at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Norfolk where I worked with the Petey Greene program. Founded in 1972, the program has been offering accredited college courses to the incarcerated for more than forty years. For decades, B.U. was joined by a number of other colleges and universities from across the state. This changed, however, during the tough-on-crime era of the Clinton Administration, when the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 withdrew Pell Grant eligibility from people in prison. If families across the country were already struggling to afford college, the argument went, why should the government take subsidies away from the general population by giving them to people in prison? (At the time, those in prison received less than thirty-five million dollars of the $5.6 billion in over-all Pell Grants.) The bill decimated the educational infrastructure inside prisons throughout the country, with universities withdrawing their programs because of a lack of financial support. Only Boston University continued serving incarcerated men and women in Massachusetts.
Last Thursday, the Obama Administration selected sixty-seven colleges and universities across twenty-seven states to participate in the Second Chance Pell Pilot Program, which aims to “create a fairer, more effective criminal justice system, reduce recidivism, and combat the impact of mass incarceration on communities.” The new initiative could make Pell Grants available to as many as twelve thousand people behind bars. Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr., made sure to address the aforementioned concerns around funding head on, stating that the resources allotted to the pilot program make up less than 0.1 per cent of the thirty-billion-dollar Pell Grants program, and will in no way cut into funding for current or future Pell Grant recipients who are not incarcerated.
As advocates of prison education might note, twelve thousand is a small proportion of the 2.3 million people currently in prison. But the executive action by the Obama Administration is a progressive step forward on correctional education, especially given that legislation like the Restoring Education and Learning (REAL) Act—which would eliminate the provision in the crime bill barring prisoners in state or federal institutions from Pell Grant eligibility—remains stalled in Congress.
Social scientists have known for some time that prison-education programs are a cost-effective and successful means of reducing recidivism. A study by the RAND Corporation in 2013 found that incarcerated individuals who participated in educational programs were forty-three per cent less likely to recidivate within three years than those who did not. It also found that correctional education increased the likelihood of obtaining employment once released, with those who participated in programming during their time behind bars thirteen per cent more likely to obtain a job than those who did not. The number might be higher if discrimination against the formerly incarcerated were not so prevalent on the job market.
While their efficacy has been known for some time, prison-education programs have tended to receive the most attention when they are involved in seemingly extraordinary intellectual feats that defy our collective social expectations. For example, last year, a debate team of men from the Bard Prison Initiative defeated a team of students from Harvard University. The Internet was awash with responses to the shocking result. How could a group of inmates beat students at one of the top schools in the world, one that ranked among the top five American Parliamentary Debate Association teams for three of the past four years?
The underlying assumption of such a reaction, however, is that being well-schooled is the same as being well-educated. But intelligence manifests itself in ways that exist beyond one’s education credentials. Being incarcerated does not mean being devoid of the capacity to learn, grow, and think, and it’s critical that prisons provide spaces where learning can be both cultivated and encouraged.
This is what makes the Obama Administration’s program so important. Pell Grants provide resources that assist colleges in building their capacity in prisons, by covering the cost of books, tuition, and fees. But, though certainly beneficial to those men and women who will receive the grants, there are limits to what the program offers. For example, to qualify, a person must be eligible for release within five years of enrolling, which doesn’t address the educational needs of those serving long-term or life sentences.
The benefits of prison education go beyond lowering recidivism rates and increasing post-release employment. It can also rekindle a sense of purpose and confidence. For Jackson, participating in the Boston University prison-education program, and moving closer to obtaining a bachelor’s degree, has fundamentally changed his sense of self—and increased the likelihood that he’ll stay out of prison if the parole board approves his release. The Second Chance Pell Pilot Program means that more people like Jackson will have an opportunity to take college-level classes, improving their chances of remaining out of prison and also of giving them back a sense of purpose that has otherwise been stripped away. Or, as Jackson said about his work, it’s “like you’re doing something with your life.”
